Monday, May 21, 2012

The Flying Spaghetti Multiverse: So what was that about science being falsifiable?

I have commented before on this blog about the argument used by Darwinists that Intelligent Design is false because it is not falsifiable--an argument that surely wins the prize for brazen ridiculousness.

I don't have a position on ID per se, other than to question whether, as philosophers like Ed Feser point out, it doesn't operate within the same modern mechanistic paradigm as does Darwinism. Creationism too, whatever its other, scientific challenges, seems to have this same philosophical problem.

But it is not only the low standards of argumentation employed against non-Darwinian explanations of origins that are remarkable, but the willingness of modern scientism to employ completely different standards of what constitutes science, as it suits their fancy.

Physicist Brian Greene has just written an article for Newsweek magazine on Multiverse theory. This is the idea that some of what we know of our present universe us unexplainable without postulating that there are other, parallel universes.

Now we have all heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the creation of critics of creationism and Intelligent Design used to underscore their argument that these scientifically heretical views are the unscientific products of the overly-credulous. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is used as an analog for religion. Like the God of religion, say the New Atheists who invented him, the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe (when none of us were around to see it; he helps those who believe in him to explain the universe as they see it; but his existence cannot be verified. There is literally no way to prove his existence (or to disprove it).

But the New Atheists all of a sudden have a brain lapse when theories of their own suffer from the same problem. Not only do they not apply the falsifiability standard to their own beliefs, they go so far (as Lawrence Krauss does in his A Universe from Nothing) to champion such unverifiable beliefs.

Multiverse theory (or string theory for that matter) displays the same characteristics of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: It is used to explain the origin of the universe and its current state, and it is entirely unverifiable. And, like the adherents to "Pastafarianism" (the name of Flying Spaghetti Monster religion) scientists averse to a belief in God find it a great comfort to believe in him.

As far as I know, these facts are not even in dispute. Every scientist I have ever read who comments on it admits this. There is not only no way to verify it; there is not even any conceivable way of verifying it.

6 comments:

Martin, I find it truly remarkable how you can write a blog post about an article that is titled:

'The latest developments in cosmology point toward the possibility that our universe is merely one of billions. '(emphasis mine)

and contains choice excerpts like these:

'The multiverse, as this vast cosmos is called, is one of the most polarizing concepts to have emerged from physics in decades, inspiring heated arguments between those who propose that it is the next phase in our understanding of reality, and those who claim that it is utter nonsense, a travesty born of theoreticians letting their imaginations run wild.'

'The multiverse proposal might be wrong. But it might also be the next step in this journey, unveiling a breathtaking panorama of universes populating a vast cosmic landscape. For some scientists, including me, that possibility makes the risk well worth taking.'

and claim it somehow shows that scientists of any kind are claiming certainty or even confidence when they are talking about string theory or multiverses. This is speculative science, everyone in science knows it and your attempts to use this kind of talk as evidence for your feeble hypothesis that science is dogmatic or like religion (when was the last time you heard the pope say: 'Jesus might not exist and it is quite possible that God doesn't either'?) and in any way, shape or form is just a show of pure and utter desperation.

I know you don't really get science because that isn't your area of expertise. Inflation theory, which explains the Big Bang, predict an eternally inflating universe. Predictions made about our universe based on Inflation theory have been confirmed by observations such as those made with the WMAP spacecraft. If these observations had not confirmed the predictions of Inflation theory, then it would have been falsified. There is a lot of what science tells us which cannot be directly observed by us, so theories are judged by whether they make useful predictions about what we can observe. Intelligent Design, which is a failed legal strategy rather than a scientific theory, makes no testable predictions at all, so your analogy of ID to an Eternal Inflation theory which does make testable predictions about our universe fails.

why do you assume that scientists are necessarily averse to believe in God? Brian explicitly said in the interview that scientists like him are merely trying to work out the fine details of the universe ( or multiverse) and how things work...and maybe God is behind all this ?!! and that would be fine with him. Not all scientists are necessarily atheists....and further it would depend on your narrow definition of God. You know the muslims have a somewhat different understanding of God than the christians , and no the buddhist are not really totally Godless/godless either ...because i think the buddhists are more interested in the science of consciousness....and perhaps this Conscious Universe 'made' us and we are an extension of this Conscious Universe - call it God ,if you like, in which case then you would'nt want to accuse a buddhist scientist/cosmologist /physicist as being averse to a belief in God...would You? LOL.